


Gambling Man

by tiger_moran



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes (Downey films), Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Don't copy to another site, Gambling, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-03-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:33:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23320252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiger_moran/pseuds/tiger_moran
Summary: Written for the prompt: [something] dealing with Moran's penchant for gambling?
Relationships: Sebastian Moran/James Moriarty
Comments: 5
Kudos: 32





	Gambling Man

**Author's Note:**

> Possibly not entirely what the person who gave me the prompt wanted but I'm afraid I don't write for the universe they wanted so I applied the prompt to the one I do write. Also I don't understand any card games so I can't really write anything about Moran actually gambling so it had to be addressed rather more obliquely.

When Moran slinks home like a tomcat which has been out all night brawling with its feline rivals - his nose bloodied, blood on his knuckles, his coat torn - Moriarty chooses to say nothing, initially. He only gives a slight roll of the eyes and the faintest of sighs as he fetches the iodine and sits down to clean up Moran's various scrapes.

“Ow,” Moran says pointedly, as the Professor wipes one of the grazes on the back of his right hand with perhaps a degree more force than might be strictly necessary. Moran looks up, trying to meet Moriarty's blue-grey eyes, almost challenging in his manner.

“Did I hurt you?” Moriarty enquires, smiling sweetly at him as he holds the iodine-soaked rag firmly against Moran's hand.

Moran shrugs his shoulder idly, feigning indifference, though the iodine certainly stings like hell. “Barely,” he says, and runs his tongue across his lower lip, absently licking away traces of blood. “Aren't you gonna ask?” he enquires finally.

“Do you mean ask why you have been out fighting, endangering _this_?” Moriarty grips Moran's right hand suddenly in a vice-like hold, the kind of grip that seems only a hair's breadth away from crushing the fragile bones.

Moran sucks in his breath sharply, grimacing, but accepting, not fighting, not struggling. He knows the Professor's self-control is perfect.

“Risking ruining your hands, making them incapable of pulling a trigger ever again?” Moriarty says, quietly but ever so fiercely. He drops Moran's hand abruptly. “Oh I am sure you had your reasons for it.” His scathing tone here clearly implies that he believes Moran's reasons to be extremely poor ones.

“We were playing cards,” Moran says, lowering his gaze. “Me, Porter, a couple of others I don't really know. We got on well enough for a time, until as I was leavin' one of 'em followed me out, said I'd been cheatin'.”

“Which of course was correct.”

Moran looks up at him again sharply, the expression on his face clearly asking the question before he even opens his mouth to speak.

“Oh don't play dim, Sebastian,” Moriarty chides. “You are pathologically incapable of not cheating.”

Moran is also more or less incapable of resisting any kind of bet or dare, which is why he has previously done everything from ride a horse along a mess hall table to shooting through the centre of a playing card from a seemingly impossible distance away, because someone bet him that he could not do so, or merely because they dared him to do it, believing that he would not manage it. It is a sort of compulsion, Moriarty supposes, in part related to his need to prove himself to those who believed him to be weak or inferior, in part simply because he obtains some sort of thrill out of it.

“Right, but...” Moran is about to protest at this, then thinks better of it, and he laughs.

“Some men play cards or other games; they gamble sometimes obscene amounts of money on those cards because they enjoy gambling,” Moriarty continues. He picks up another clean rag, dips it into a bowl of warm water and begins to carefully, almost tenderly, dab away the blood around Moran's nose. “The excitement of the game, the possibility of winning, and of winning big, and the money itself of course, that is what they like, it is what stimulates them. And some men cheat at these games because they must, because they desperately need the money, but you... you enjoy _cheating_. For you, I think, the pleasure you get from gambling is secondary to the enjoyment you get from cheating at the game. You relish the thrill you get from being underhand, from your little acts of rebellion against the proper order of things, and from the risk of getting caught. I suppose in a way it is not so different to some of the things I have bade you do for me.”

Moran is about to point out that there is a world of difference between bilking men of a few pounds and murdering someone, but he doesn't. He can see Moriarty's point.

“So _of course_ , my dear Moran, you were cheating,” Moriarty continues. “So this fellow's accusations were hardly unwarranted.”

“I s'pose, but then he hit me. Nearly broke my bloody nose.”

“So you hit him back harder.”

“Course I did.” Moran says this with amusement, and a touch of pride.

“I hope you did not kill him over a mere card game.” This statement is not necessarily made for more compassionate reasons – Moriarty is not especially concerned about the fate of any random stranger who is foolish enough to gamble with Moran. But it is a matter of practicality. Dead people are messy – sometimes literally, always figuratively. Certainly they can be made to disappear, but that almost always takes effort and money to arrange. Moriarty of course does not truly believe the Colonel is reckless enough to kill people in public places, but it is best to check.

“Course not.” Moran knows how to fight – brutally, quickly, rather dirtily. At times he may come off looking somewhat battered and bloodied himself, but generally he emerges in a far better state than anyone foolish enough to take him on. While he knocked the man down however, he certainly did not kill him, or even seriously maim him.

“Good.” Moriarty, considering Moran's present state, with his hair ruffled up and his face still smeared with blood, might have to admit to himself that there is something strangely appealing about this reminder of the Colonel's feral nature. Although Moran's habit of getting into fights with people, usually because of his quick temper, is irksome, the Professor still appreciates the fact that Moran is not some demure, weak-willed individual, and he likes that although Moran can scrub up very nicely indeed, he also still has this far rougher side to him.

“You seem almost to want to make yourself unpopular, to make enemies, even,” he remarks, still dabbing away dried blood. “Be you in one of your clubs or some most insalubrious pub; you cannot help yourself in either, both. I am certain that when you were young you used to cheat your schoolmates out of their pocket money too.”

Moran grins at this. “They hated me anyway so I wasn't exactly ever gonna feel bad for that.” A bunch of toffs they were, who did not believe that Moran truly belonged amongst them, a belief which really he did little to discourage. But he played cards with them; he gambled, for sometimes surprisingly large amounts of money, and yes, he usually cheated. At first perhaps that was purely out of spite towards them. Later though, maybe he simply couldn't help himself. It did not make him any more popular amongst them, of course, and brought trouble down upon him more than once. “I got caned a few times, you know, for gambling,” he says. And weren't his school chums always so very quick to abandon him to the mercies of an irate headmaster, or to insist it was all his idea and they were nought but pure innocent lambs led astray by this wicked Judas goat when they were caught playing cards for money. There was no loyalty towards him; not one of those boys was willing to stand up for him, but he expected nothing else. “That and for fighting with an older boy who didn't much like me managing to win ten pounds off him.”

“That does not surprise me in the slightest.” Moriarty smiles thinly. He drops the bloodied rag into the bowl of water, swirls it around to wash out some of the blood, squeezes it out and resumes wiping Moran's face. Still his touch is gentle and tender. When he brushes against Moran's nose with the cloth, making him wince, he looks at the Colonel with concern. “It hurts?”

“A bit.”

“I don't believe it's broken.”

“No, I don't think it is.” Not this time. His nose is still a little crooked from the last few times he got it broken, but now it seems he escaped another break. “Keats,” he says, glancing off into space momentarily. The name springs unbidden to his mind and his lips almost at the same instant, and he starts slightly. He had not intended to speak more of his unhappy schooldays. It seems though that around Moriarty, especially when the Professor is being kind, Moran frequently lets his guard down.

“Hmm?”

“Keats,” Moran repeats. “He was... the older boy; he hit me first, broke my nose, and I still got caned while he got away scot free. Except for the broken arm I gave him of course.” Moran's grin contains a great deal of malevolence. A somewhat happier memory, that one.

“Did he ever get his ten pounds back?” Moriarty enquires.

Moran laughs. “No.”

“You are incorrigible.”

Moran grins again, more warmly and far more amused now. “That's why you like me.”

“Yes. Just so long as you never try to cheat _me_ ,” Moriarty says, smiling. He holds Moran's gaze for several seconds, and of course there is a double meaning there, though the Professor need never actually make threats towards the Colonel. Moran must never cheat _on_ him, by seeking physical gratification elsewhere, and nor must he betray him more professionally, by revealing his criminal secrets to the police or to a rival for instance, but Moran knows this already and, moreover, is not inclined to cheat the Professor in either manner. Even were someone to dare him to betray Moriarty, that is one challenge he would be able to turn down. He is wholly loyal to the Professor and they both know it, even if neither of them is precisely sure how this came to be so.

Of course the price of betraying Moriarty professionally is death – there is no other form of punishment that would be fitted to such behaviour. Moran is less certain how exactly Moriarty would react to him going behind his back to sow a few wild oats elsewhere though. There has been mention made by the Professor before that, were that to ever happen, a sharp blade might be made use of and the separation from his body of one or two precious parts of Moran's anatomy might occur, but this was merely the Professor teasing him. Neither fate concerns him overmuch however, for both are entirely hypothetical and therefore irrelevant.

There is no malice in the Professor's tone or manner currently though, no accusation, thus Moran is not offended by this apparent suggestion that he might betray Moriarty. “Course I won't, sir.”

“Just be careful about who you gamble with.” Moriarty finishes wiping the blood from Moran's face and drops the rag into the water. “I can't have you brawling in the street every time.”

“It ain't every time,” Moran points out. He puts his hand to his nose and touches it experimentally, just to be certain it isn't broken. He pulls a face at its soreness, but it seems to be no more than bruised. “I s'pose this time I just... got a bit careless.”

“Yes, well.” Moriarty stands up. “Don't.”

“Don't get into fights or don't get careless?” Moran queries.

Holding the bowl of bloodied water, with the rag swirling in its depths like some strange sea-snake, Moriarty tilts his head to regard the Colonel. “Both, of course.”

Easier said than done perhaps, with Moran's nature, though under Moriarty's control he is generally behaving far less rashly than he once did.

“And what about gambling? Will you bid me cease that and all?” he asks.

“I would not go so far as to do that." Moriarty gives him a smile that seems almost fond. “I know it would be rather futile anyway.”

“Yeah.” Moran grins again. “I reckon it probably would.”


End file.
